For the Left to win a National Election, the Electoral College, or the White House ever again, given present trends and the new projections from the U.S. Census Bureau, indications are that possibility is becoming more and more unlikely.
This from thehill.com.
Leftist strongholds like California and New York appear likely to lose population and multiple electoral votes, while GOP-leaning states like Texas and Florida are likely to pick up votes. That would lead to a shift in 2030.
Republican strategist Constantin Querard said:
You have people shifting from blue states to red states, and it is indicative of a national trend that bodes well just for Republicans in general.
He suggested the movement is by people who favor the policies of GOP-led governments. This suggests minimal threat that those moving would take with them the broke woke politics of their former locales.
Querard said:
They’re going from blue states to red states for a reason.
That reason is to escape from troublesome living conditions, not to spread bad politics.
The census is conducted once every 10 years, however, most recent projections indicate the changes could shake up political power after the turn of the next decade. The estimations are based on population growth trends that the Brennan Center for Justice reported for the period between July 1, 2022, and July 1, 2024.
The center estimates that California and New York, by far the two largest states in the Leftist coalition of the electoral map, would lose four seats and two seats, respectively. Meanwhile, Texas and Florida, which were the two largest states in President-elect Trump’s winning coalition in 2024, are estimated to gain four seats each.
Taken altogether, if the estimated new map was in place for 2024, Trump would have won 10 additional electoral votes, while his opponent would have won 10 fewer. The difference is relatively small compared to the total 538 electoral votes up for grabs in an election, but it could still be key in the current political environment, which has been defined by tight races.
Joseph Fishkin, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who has taught and written about election law and the American political system, said:
The moment in politics with such evenly divided parties and such deep partisan entrenchment and antipathy is not a typical combination in American politics, but it is what we’re in right now.
None of the past three presidential elections, which encompass the Trump era, would have swung the other way because of these projected shifts, but they could change the calculus for political candidates in determining what to prioritize when campaigning and concentrating on just a handful of battleground states.
Querard noted that the total number of votes Republicans would gain under this estimation is roughly the electoral equivalent of his own state of Arizona, which is currently worth 11 electoral votes and was projected to receive one more after 2030.
He said:
It’s suddenly you need one less state to win.
Or, if you’re the Democrats, it’s almost like one more state has been taken off the board. Obviously, that’s a big deal because we’ve had some pretty close presidential races.
Dave Wasserman, the senior editor of Cook Political Report, noted that the projections are not great for the Left, but that the census projections from the end of 2023 looked worse for the party.
In five more years, it could look different still.
California had been gaining seats until the end of the 20th century before staying the same after 2010 and losing a seat for the first time in its history after 2020.
Some on the Left said the changes mean the party needs to find a new strategy to have a path to victory in the Electoral College.
Since 2016, the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have been key to Democrats’ winning map and have made or broken the party’s chances. But even winning those would not be enough for a Leftist candidate to win with all other states voting as they did in November.
Leftist strategist Jon Reinish said:
It’s yet another flashing red sign for Democrats.
I think that Democrats could very easily now see what is their Electoral College count base, such as it is, shrink.
Further:
[T]his will put more pressure on the party to expand the map.
Leftist strategist Crimson Macdonald, who is based in Kentucky, said:
[T]he party needs to go into places it hasn’t in recent cycles to start having conversations with communities outside its base.
Querard and Fishkin said the shifts may even have a larger impact in the House, with state officials choosing how district lines are drawn and determining the makeup of each district.
Referring to the Republican House Speaker from Louisiana, Querard said:
If you ask Mike Johnson how much he’d like 10 more seats right now, he would really appreciate it.
